machines also. My biggest gripe with Apple is that they make it much more difficult to repair your machine after something goes bad on it. Swapping a hard drive, replacing a battery, or display, or motherboard is infinitely more difficult to do on Apple computers. This is by design because Apple doesn't want you to fix your computer, they want you to buy a new machine. My wife's macbook pro "shift" key on the computer failed after two years. I took it to the Apple store and they wanted $300 to replace they keyboard.

Well, you're not wrong, but let's put this in perspective. Before I got Mac Air, I had IBM T41. It is very repairable as long as you have the parts; I actually got several used machines with high mileage and scavenged them for parts. I could for instance take out the CPU fan and blow the dust out of it, or take out the HDD with windows and plug in the one with linux and just keep working. But the reality is, you need to clean the fan only after the machine had 5 years behind it, you change the HDD just for the fun of it and not because it's really necessary, you upgrade the RAM to 1.5GB and then it's fine for all the things you would use such a laptop for, and if something more significant breaks down and you don't have the parts, you're screwed, as I was when I lost the motherboard. Even with the most repairable machine, such as the IBM T-series, you really upgrade the RAM and the HDD, and if anything else gets too crowded you need to change the entire machine. It's not a desktop computer, where if you need a bigger monitor you just go to the nearby store and buy one. So upgrades in laptops are very limited anyway so I wouldn't really take that against Apple, not all that much. I am annoyed that I can't add more RAM to my Air, but I'm surprised at how far 2GB actually go.With desktop computers, it's a different matter entirely. I'm a big fan of assembling my own from parts and installing the system myself from scratch, to get a highly customized system, where I pay only for what I need and if something gets crowded I selectively upgrade.

Then again, when I do upgrade, it usually consists of changing the motherboard, CPU and RAM, which is more-less the entire computer minus the PSU and the case. So basically what I do is throw the entire machine away and keep the case, which is why I had the same ugly beat up gray case for five years up until recently, when I just got sick of looking at the thing and bought a better looking case with better ventilation. With Apple, at least you are forced to get a new case and PSU every five years so you don't keep the same old PSU until it dies and takes all your hardware with it in that last spike.

Changing the monitor together with everything else is where I'm hugely skeptical. I don't know how long a LCD monitor can last but I would guess that the ones with LED backlight would outlast the rest of the machine by a few years, so I don't find that to be an economical process.

When it becomes virtually impossible to change the battery on your laptop, then you really are committed to a two to three year machine. That really sucks. I'll wait to see what you think of your Air in two or three years.

And 2 out of three Macs that I have had to have the HDD replaced because it FAILED within two years of purchase (not for FUN reasons at all). It's also quite annoying that most all of the reliability issues with Apple computers are resolved via class action lawsuits because Apple is so reluctant to admit there is anything actually wrong.